Film Review: The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn

'Plucky Belgian journalist seeks lost treasure with drunken seaman in swashbuckling adventure'. While this might sound like a salacious advert pulled from the naughty section of Craigslist, I can assure you that it is the plot for a new film involving one of the most recognisable childhood heros of a generation. That film of course is Steven Spielberg's incarnation of The Adventures of Tintin.

Tintin has a particularly unique effect on its audience, as is faithful to creator Hergé's male detective who possesses as much childlike wonder and naivety as he does the real-world acumen and perspicacity of an adult. And yet he has no discernable age. This is because Tintin, voiced by Jamie Bell, is a blank slate onto which we project ourselves; inoffensive and vacuously presentable, yet reacting to extraordinary situations in ways we might imagine should such events befall us. Tintin consequently appeals to the whole spectrum of ages watching it.

This is a theme which extends throughout the film, set in locations which, for example, may or may not be Paris, at a time which could be anywhere from the 1920s to the 1960s. It poses a strange paradox, almost like a dream in that Hergé's creation is both so rich in details, palpable to the senses and instantly recognisable, yet equally blank and unfurnished to the point where Tintin's setting is there and nowhere at the same time. But this is the magic trick, to create a vessel for our own imaginations.

To describe The Adventures Of Tintin as an endless, 'action packed' roller coaster would be a gross understatement in what is literally scene after scene of action set pieces. Admittedly everything looks mighty impressive in glorious CGI and everything is incredibly well choreographed, but it does get old and leaves our human protagonists disappointingly bare-boned. Nonetheless it will no doubt delight children, however to say the film is childish in its themes would also be a misjudgement. Perhaps surprisingly for a PG film, death is alluded to throughout as is the very real sense that bullets actually mean business. While gore is never visible, invariably scenes involving guns or sword-play end with some glimpse of fatality.

Moreover, take one Captain Archibald Haddock (Serkis), a drunken sailor from whom most of the film's humour stems from. We have here a man who thinks it prudent to stop off in the ship's galley and load up on bottles of whiskey while a bunch of goons with guns chase him and Tintin. Yes, stumbling about in a drunken stupor doing stupid things is funny, but Haddock's situation is so pathetic that it's almost pitiful. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but while it's all fun and games to restart a a piston engine by belching alcoholic fumes into it, it is perhaps not so funny when your alcoholism continuously endangers you and your friend's lives. Throughout, I was never quite sure what message Tintin was sending to children. Was it a warning to the dangers of alcohol? Or was it more an advertisement, as if to say 'hey, getting drunk is pretty fucking funny!'. Unfortunately despite the best efforts of our Captain, The Adventures Of Tintin is never outright hilarious. Sure I grinned, but it never evoked so much as a bawdy laugh from yours truly.

Tintin is nonetheless a true Spielberg film, sporting elements of Indy (and even shades of the Uncharted videogames) with the heart to match. Like with most of Spielberg's films this implores you to invest in Hergé's ensorcelling world, dazzlingly realised in gorgeous CGI. For the kid in all of us this is a high-spirited effort which has the capacity to delight. However, it is also somewhat disappointing that there isn't much fat to chew on here. A break for pause to catch one's breath would have been most welcome in places, but overall this is a fairly spunky and charming tale which is capriciously realised.

Film Review: Ironclad

The story of democracy in Britain is often portrayed to begin and end with the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215. However, unbeknownst to many, the signing of this legendary document wasn't the end of it. Never really intending to grant the unprecedented liberties he felt coerced into signing, bad King John quickly sought to reverse the charter by eliminating the rebel barons. Standing in his way was the strategically situated Rochester Castle, manned by only a few-hundred rebels. Ironclad seeks to shed light on this little known annex of British history, but it is less historical fact than it is a rewrite of The Magnificent Seven.

Ironclad pretty much picks up where Ridley Scott's Robin Hood left off. 1215. Having been forced to sign the Magna Carta, King John (Giamatti) hires a bunch of Danish mercenaries to eradicate the Barons which humiliated him. Dispersed and reluctant to fight, only one Baron, William de Albany (Cox) stands in King John's way. Pulling together less than a dozen men, including a highly trained Templar Knight, Marshall (Purefoy), Albany's band of merry men must hold onto the strategically positioned Rochester Castle until the French arrive to bail them out (no joke).

Simply, Ironclad is a gore-fest aimed at indiscriminate action fans. It is not a historical epic by any means, sacrificing accuracy for a cheesy tale of stoic heroism that will appeal to teenage boys' wet dreams of 300-style martyrdom. Indeed, there aren't the hundreds of rebels which history (well, wikipedia) suggests. Instead, the defending rebels have been whittled down to less than twenty, facing a barbaric horde of thousands of vikings in countless monotonous shots of close-up limb hacking.

The characters are the stock standard for this kind of affair. Mackenzie Crook plays some sort of Legolas role as a crack-shot archer, there's some tough guy, some guy with questionable morals but who's probably good at heart, and your quiet, stoic, hero-type who hacks off limbs in really cool ways and speaks little, but when he does it's invariably profound. Of course, Purefoy's Marshall is going to provide the main attraction for any medieval wench, and Kate Mara's Lady Isabel provides the eye candy as a horny harlot bent on destroying Marshall's years of devotion to God through his vow of chastity. It is actually quite cringe-worthy to watch Marshall spend half his time trying to fend off the increasingly comic come-ons of the sex-starved Lady Isabel, who slinks around the castle like a half-minded sex pest. Perhaps the most enjoyable parts however involve Giamatti's King John as a permanently irate arsehole. He's petty and cruel like a deranged toddler with a divine birthright making for a good villain. And yet he inevitably suffers from the same flaws as everybody else in this movie; being wholly one-dimensional.

Ironclad is your quintessential prefabricated medieval romp but feels about as epic as a TV mini-series. You can never really take it very seriously, even being slightly reminiscent of Monty Python and the Holy Grail  in some parts as King John and the Albany hurl insults at each other over the battlements. "You're no more a king than the boil on my arse" bellows the Baron as you half expect the retort "I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries". Like sieges in general, Ironclad is slow, dull and monotonous, punctuated by the occasional gratuitous violence.